What is Apache Kafka

Definition

Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform that stores streams of records in durable, partitioned, append-only logs called topics, letting many producers and consumers publish and subscribe to high-throughput event data in real time and reliably at scale.

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Handles millions of events per second with durable, replayable, partitioned logs
Decouples producers from consumers so systems scale and evolve independently
Retains event history, letting new or recovering consumers replay past data
Acts as a central nervous system connecting microservices and streaming pipelines

Real World Example

A ride-hailing platform publishes driver-location and trip events to Kafka topics, where pricing, ETA, and fraud services each consume the same streams independently to react to events within milliseconds.

FAQs

What is a Kafka topic?

A topic is a named, partitioned, append-only log to which producers write events and from which consumers read them.

Why is Kafka durable and replayable?

Kafka persists events to disk and retains them for a configured period, so consumers can re-read past records instead of losing them after delivery.

What is Kafka used for?

Real-time pipelines, event-driven microservices, log aggregation, stream processing, and feeding analytics platforms with live data.